ASM 315-325 & Annual 23, TAC 150-157, WEB 51-57, Daredevil 270, Sensational She-Hulk 3. The 2nd Venom story. MJ’s cousin Kristy has an eating disorder in the most 80s soap opera plot possible. JJJ is kidnapped and replaced by The Chameleon. Joe Robertson faces off with his lifelong tormentor, the mob boss Tombstone, on an Amish farm, no less. Spidey fights Hydro-Man, Rhino & Electro, and joins Daredevil to fight Blackheart. He helps She-Hulk’s head get her body back from people who stole it in her book (Really), then fights Lemurians with her during Atlantis Attacks. Puma, in his normal life as billionair Thomas Fireheart, feels he owes Spider-Man a debt of honor, and buys the Daily Bugle to make them stop printing mean things about him. Hammerhead & Chameleon engineer a gang war between Mexican werewolf drug lords and The Kingpin, forcing Glory Grant to shoot her werewolf boyfriend, which is quite a sentence. Most importantly, The Red Skull engineers a coup attempt in Silver Sable’s native Symkaria and implicates the US government to try to start a war, and Spidey gets drawn in to helping Paladin, Silver and Captain America try to stop it. Also Scorpion makes Spider-Man bring him a pizza during a hostage situation. Including the pizza box was important to me. This one was interesting. It wound up being my most direct McFarlane homage, but didn’t start that way. I did a Todd-style Spider-Man, but then did all the figures along the bottom more or less as me, except for a Romita-y JJJ due to Romita, Sr. working on a JJJ-centric issue of Web. But then as it goes up, I referenced McFarlane more and more. When I was a kid desperately trying to emulate him, I couldn’t figure out how he got that texture. I think I have it now. It was weirdly satisfying to unlock that 30 years later. Drawing the web pattern on Spider-Man’s face wrong because McFarlane did makes me grind my teeth while I do it. All original despite the attempted pastiche. Originally drawing #17.